Beside him, Mercy tensed.
Beside her, Farrah soothed. ‘It’ll be okay, Merce.’
‘I know.’ But she sounded uncertain. Trembling, she stood as the front door was flung open and footsteps thundered across the foyer floor. She looked like she was facing a firing squad, and Rafe didn’t know how to help her.
‘Rafe?’ Gideon called out. ‘Where is she?’
‘In here, Gideon,’ Irina called. ‘In the kitchen.’
Hesitantly, Rafe stood and offered his hand, genuinely surprised when Mercy took it, squeezing hard. ‘He loves you so much,’ he murmured into her ear. ‘It will be okay.’
Her nod was shaky, her grip becoming punishing as Gideon appeared in the doorway.
Her brother came to an abrupt halt, staring at her from haggard eyes. ‘Mercy,’ he whispered hoarsely. ‘You came back.’
Five
Santa Rosa, California
Saturday, 15 April, 8.20 P.M.
‘Coffee?’
Ephraim looked up from his laptop to see Regina Jewel standing in the doorway to his room, a steaming cup in her hand. ‘Please.’
She entered without the slink in her step that she showed the rest of her customers. Ephraim had known her too long for her wiles to have any effect on him – plus, at forty-five, she was about thirty years too old for him. But she knew what he liked, from the girls she kept to the coffee she prepared.
‘Thank you. I needed a hit of caffeine.’ His head pounded and he felt a little sick.
Regina eyed him with concern. ‘You don’t look so good, my friend.’
Except that they weren’t friends. But they weren’t enemies either, and Ephraim aimed to keep it that way. Powerful in her own right, Regina owned enough cops to run her business smoothly. She was first and foremost a businesswoman, and she respected the financial relationship they’d built over the past decade.
‘Got a headache,’ Ephraim muttered.
Regina stroked her fingers up his neck, then began to massage his shoulders, which felt so damn good. Until she brushed a lock of his hair at the back of his skull aside and probed, making him hiss.
‘Bad bump,’ she said. ‘Your headache from getting hit in the head by any chance?’
‘Yes.’ Ephraim had to hold back a snarl. ‘The massage felt good. More of that.’
‘I’ll do more later. I need to get some ice for your head.’
‘No, it’s not that bad. I popped some Tylenol,’ he said, then looked back at his laptop. He stored the device here, in Regina’s house. She allowed him to keep a locker in her bedroom, and only Ephraim had the key. He didn’t think she’d try to snoop, and she knew far worse things about him. Besides, his laptop was password protected, so even if she got curious, she couldn’t snoop.
He didn’t dare use his laptop when he was in Eden. DJ Belmont was damn handy with technology, and Ephraim would bet his last dollar that DJ had rigged their system so that he could view all computer searches. There was only one computer in Eden, anyway, kept locked up in the clinic. They had a satellite hookup that enabled them to access the Internet, and that was how Pastor managed their funds. It was also how DJ communicated with the customers who purchased whatever illegal substance they happened to be making at the time. Nearly thirty years earlier, it had been pot, but the Feds had gotten good at sniffing out large pot farms. They’d dabbled in opioids, but that had required too much labor for too little profit. Now they grew and sold psilocybin, but that market was becoming iffy as well, what with cities decriminalizing it.
They were good for now, because the market was still strong. It could be decades before shrooms were legal everywhere. Ephraim had no doubt that DJ had a plan for their next illegal venture, and it was all on that one computer. One that Ephraim wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole.
‘Who is Raphael Sokolov?’ Regina asked, looking at the screen as she resumed massaging his shoulders. Damn, the woman had good hands.
‘A cop. He’s the one who hit me tonight.’
‘Then he’s a bastard,’ Regina said soothingly.
‘That’s for sure.’ Ephraim dropped his head, stretching his stiff neck.
‘Why did he hit you?’
‘I really don’t know,’ Ephraim lied smoothly.
She chuckled. ‘He didn’t hit you that hard, E. Not enough to scramble your brains. But it’s okay. I heard the news reports. I know there are BOLOs out on you all over the state. The reporters say that you tried to abduct a woman from the airport. I saw her photo. She’s a little old for your tastes, isn’t she?’
‘She wasn’t when I married her,’ he muttered.
Regina stopped the massage. ‘You’re married?’
‘Unfortunately, yes.’ Because all of his wives were too old now. He wished he could just get rid of them like he did his very first ball and chain, but Pastor frowned on open murder. He’d been able to pass off the first wife’s early demise as an accident to the Eden community, but Pastor knew the truth. Ephraim had been officially punished, which for him required taking on another wife who was also too old for his liking. At least most of his wives behaved themselves.
Unlike Mercy, Rhoda, and then Miriam, who’d all run away.
‘That’s all you’re going to tell me? “Unfortunately, yes”?’
‘Yes.’ Because Regina didn’t know about Eden, and he never intended for her to. It was enough that she knew about his predilection for young girls, but at least there they each had equally damaging information on the other. Yes, Ephraim liked to fuck fourteen-year-olds, but Regina sold them, so they were at a stalemate.
‘So you married Mercy Callahan?’ Regina prodded. ‘Did she leave you?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Huh. And this Raphael Sokolov. Is he her new man?’
‘I don’t know.’ And that pissed him off. He’d been digging into Sokolov for nearly an hour and all he knew was that the man was a homicide detective on leave because he’d been injured saving Mercy Callahan from a deranged killer.
The same deranged killer who’d murdered another of his wives. It was a CNN report about Miriam’s murder that had alerted him to the fact that Mercy was still alive.
‘I see. What do you know, Ephraim?’
‘That I’m tired of answering your questions.’
With a thin smile, she pulled up a chair. ‘Too bad, because I have quite a few more. I’d heard Mercy Callahan’s name before tonight, but I couldn’t remember where, so I looked her up. She was one of the three women who escaped that serial killer who was taken down back in February.’